


Seven Dreams East

by Cyrelia_J



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Language, M/M, Marijuana, Oral Sex, POV First Person, Smoking, Teen Angst, Twincest, Unsafe driving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-14 05:49:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2180316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyrelia_J/pseuds/Cyrelia_J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A period piece set in 1971. 16 year old runaways Alfred and Matthew take to the road, wild, free, and ready to take on the world. But are they ready for what the world has in store for them? </p><p>Mostly a pwp in chapter 1 though Al might be a little innocent about what “doing it” really is. Some angst in chapter 2. America/Canada with some small hints of England/America and France/Canada later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Running away from home on the open road, Alfred dreams only of Matthew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got seriously inspired by Lana Del Rey’s “Ride” and it blossomed into this fic here. Probably one of the more straight up romance fics I’ve ever done and the first 1st person porn. I should say this part is mostly romance, next part is more teen angst but still smutty. and way trippy.

A year from now my brother Mattie will be gone. In two hundred eighty nine days Matthew Jones- now Williams- will be in Paris.  At least that’s what Madame Esmerelda told me in a musty old tent when Mattie and I were thirteen. I don’t want to believe her. I _don’t_ believe her. But it hasn’t made me stop counting the days. And that’d make it like almost a year to the day since Jim Morrison died. Which would be heavy symbolic... but I don’t believe in symbols either or any of that other weirdo hippy stuff. I once tried a _Ouija_ board at a party and I once tried seven minutes in heaven too. They all thought it was funny that I ended up stuck in a closet with my brother. I thought it was funny that Mattie ate like five hot dogs and his lips still tasted like Corn Flakes. 

I don’t always think about stuff though, not really. Mattie says I don’t think enough with my head- that’s always been his thing. He daydreams and I fix stuff. I fixed this car. I spent all last summer after both of us saved forever for this old wreck and I didn’t see I guess what Mattie would say is the potential but he did. He saw the 8 track player under the dash and like new chrome and even the seats that we fixed with this old fabric from when Grandmom redid her living room. Mattie sees everything even if his vision is a total waste. Mom always said it’s because he reads at night with a flashlight. Gilbert said it’s because he probably strokes it too much. But Mattie doesn’t read those kinds of magazines. He reads like Oscar Wilde and Ginsberg and all that really queer stuff. I don’t get it but I always look for magazine clippings and stuff ‘cause Mattie loves it. Mattie loves a lot of things, really but I’m the one he loves most of all.

I smile when I look at him. It’s so hard not to. I tease him sometimes when I say he looks like Janis Joplin with his big glasses and his long hair- he grew it that way ‘cause he wanted to be like Johnny Winter. He’s so pale when the sun bounces off him like this it’s almost blinding. I forget to watch the road sometimes when we’re driving. He’s worried I’m gonna hit a deer but there’s like 5 feet of American Steel between me and them and-

“Al…” 

“Yeah right.” He’s smiling back at me as he looks back down at the loose papers resting on the book. It’s so hard not to look at him when he looks at me like that. I can feel my own glasses slipping. I don’t need them. I never did.

“Sorry.” I’m not sorry. Mattie just shakes his head and I make myself look at the winding road and the sign warning for falling rocks. 

I kick the speed up to seventy. I want to go faster. I want to go so fast that they never catch us. I want to go so fast that there’s no time- that there’s nothing but me and Mattie and nothing else. I love the way the big block 396 V8 roars when I hit 80. The road’s still drying from yesterday’s rain and I see Mattie out of the corner of my eye let go of the paper, the pen, and reach for me before the seatbelt. I hear the book drop. I feel his fingers hooking into my arm, his hand on my leg and it makes me push down harder on the gas. I can feel his leg next to mine, feel the wind whipping our hair like crazy and I laugh. I laugh and I hear him laughing next to me above even the roar of the engine, the roar of the September air. I crank up the volume, the speakers blaring “Brown Sugar” from “Sticky Fingers” and Mattie’s sticky fingers are stuck to me like glue.

The top’s down. That’s the best part. It was too wet yesterday but today the sun is out and even as humid as it is the air rushing by feels amazing. It feels ten times better than sitting in class suffocating while Mrs. So and So drones on about Avocado’s Number or whatever the heck they’re learning this year. I’m learning life. I’m learning papers flying through the air from Mattie’s lap like a dozen magic doves let loose to fly in the sky. It’s like origami butterflies and even Mattie’s turn of his head, the way his eyes get big behind those big glasses trying to catch them before they’re released to the wind is like some crazy mysticism, like the finger of God reaching down from above. I’m going so fast that I can’t watch him but I can feel the shift in the seat as he moves. I tease Mattie about being slow but the way he moves is just like water when he twists over the seat grabbing for every paper he can right as we round the bend. He’s like the river flowing everywhere, like the Delaware through the trees and I can’t help it I gotta look at him just a little longer.

I can still see the road. I mean I can see enough of it that the trees are going by crazy quick like a blur of green and even behind Mattie the rock face and railing are like a blur. But he’s just standing there, standing up with his hair blowing all over, and he leans forward, putting his hands on the seat back with just a look of wonder watching the road disappear behind us. I want to watch him forever. I want to look at him just like that and even if I die. Even if I drive into the trees right now watching Mattie looking like that all beautiful and perfect and mine is just the most amazing thing in the world. He’s holding the seat like he won’t ever let go even as fast as we’re going and he looks down at me with the craziest smile like the kind that usually only I have and he just begs me to go faster. 

When he looks at me like that I can’t deny him anything. When he looks at me like I’m the only one in the world that can make every dream come true I can’t say no. I don’t care how stupid it is- how crazy. He used to hide behind me when we were kids and he’d get picked on. “ _Anything... you can do anything, Al, I know you can_.” That’s what I hear him saying to me when I kick the speed up flying along the river thankful that this early in the morning we haven’t seen another car or a cop or anything. I cross myself as I look at the road just long enough to focus before I look back at him in those high waisted tight brown pants. He always wears long shirts even in the summer and the tight white shirt now is opened just one button at the top like... like the silliest thing really the rest wrapped around him shiny like mother of pearl or something but it’s perfect. When I look at him, two days into exile, into being thrown out of our house for being disgusting faggots... for being like that with each other... I think this is the happiest day of my life when I let my eyes go wild between him and the road and his butt almost in my face, his long legs leaning against the front of the seat, his body rocking against the back of it so excited...

I swallow as I finally see a car passing on the double yellow while Mattie blows two happy kisses like a little kid. I almost hit the old station wagon but I’m like on fire as I come to another wicked curve, downshifting to third nothing but instinct as we almost slide, almost drift and I kick it up again while Mattie just holds onto the headrest with an excited scream. I can see his head tip back. I can see him look up at the sun with one arm over his eyes to shield them and he looks so good, breathing heavy, half closing his eyes as I speed up again thanking God and GM for posi-traction. Mattie has a way kissable throat. I kiss it sometimes. Sometimes I rest my head on his shoulder and just smell mom’s V05 and put my lips to his pulse and feel it flutter against me. _I want to kiss you Mattie. I want to kiss you so bad right now._

I’m hard. Sometimes watching him makes me get like that and I move my hand just a second to reach out and touch his leg, to put my hand on his thigh and squeeze or... Or hit a bump in the road that might’ve been a squirrel or a raccoon but it definitely wasn’t a skunk. And somehow in the moment the wind picks up and hits just right and I can just picture the books falling on the floor when I see the open map flutter into the wind in the rearview mirror. I swear under my breath, Mattie’s eyes meeting mine helplessly. I can hear the voice of my driving teacher- of dad- in my head yelling as I slam on the brakes throwing the car to neutral stalling out completely when I try to hurry up and shift back to first. Mattie kneels back down still looking behind us and I think of that station wagon breathing out hard imagining it coming around the bend like an avenging angel. I lower the volume of the radio as Mattie settles down and blinks at me while I turn the car back over and pull onto the shoulder of the road.

“I’ll get it, Al,” Mattie says looking at me with an easy smile even as I sit back in the seat and feel my pulse to make sure that it’s still there. I watch him in the mirror. I watch his back growing smaller as he runs alongside the road and I think there’s something beautiful and awful about seeing him running out of my sight like that. I turn the radio back up and shut my eyes in the shadow of the cliff face and trees feeling summer winds fading and the humid air making my hair stick to my neck. I try and remember if there’s still an open pop in the cooler. Last night was the first night I ever drank birch beer. I shared it with Mattie and it made our lips tingle when I kissed him in the parking lot of the motel. I touch my fingers to my lips, moving them up and remember when I was younger and used to kiss my hand for “practice”. I shake my head thinking we spent the whole night in that motel doing watching bable TV and stuffing ourselves sick with McDonald’s. We did it like 3 times before we fell asleep.

I hear the door open as Mattie sits down hard next to me out of breath, the map being carefully put in the glove box. I lower my hand and open my eyes just in time to see Mattie looking at me triumphantly and he takes my hand just holding it in his own gritty with road dirt. 

“Practicing again, Al?” He teases me, placing a small kiss to my index and middle finger. I smile back bringing our hands back to my mouth this time kissing the tips of his fingers, kissing his hand, his wrist, every part of him I get get to while Mick Jagger sings “wild horses couldn’t drag me away.” I hear the rush of that station wagon blow by us, the kids in the back calling us losers. I just smile bigger holding Mattie’s hand more tightly praying that he doesn’t slip through my fingers like the song. Mattie squeezes back looking at me with just a small little tilt of his head that reminds me of a puppy or this little bear we saw at the Columbus Zoo once. 

“I’d rather practice on you, silly.” 

His eyes drop down to his lap looking shy. I don’t know how he can do that. I’ve kissed him so many times at breakfast, at bed, even once at school when we got there too early and no one was looking. That felt really good too. It felt normal. It felt like we were just two teenagers totally in love and not... I don’t let the smile falter even when I think of our parents screaming at us and Dad telling us we were no longer his sons. _But they won’t come after us, will they, Mattie? It doesn’t matter that we’re sixteen, that we’re alone, none of it..._

“We’re not runaways... we’re castaways,” I say giving voice to everything going through my head making Mattie look back up like he knows every thing that goes on in my head. I said that to him the first night we spent on the road from home to here too but now it’s like he totally gets it. He leans in a little, tossing his head, hair out of his eyes and back over his shoulder looking super kissable. I squeeze his hands more and lick my lips tasting lingering Clover gum before I lean in too and press my lips against his way too quickly. I kiss him again, eyes shut, open, feeling myself breathing harder with each steady growing close mouthed kiss.

I can feel him breathing against me and I can feel when those kisses mid pant turn to a mashing up lips with open mouths gasping for breath as we both scoot closer on the big bench seat. Sometimes I don’t know if it’s better to keep my eyes open or closed. I like to open them just to see if I can look in his eyes crazy close and see like a kaleidoscope or like holding a mirror up to a mirror and looking at each image inside itself growing smaller ’til it disappears. Yeah, it’s kinda of like that and Mattie teases me about being a poet myself like he wants to be but I can never get this stuff on paper the way that he does. And it’s only him, I think, that makes my head go in all these directions like every word I can think of isn’t enough. I can feel his hands slipping from mine and for one weird minute I want to grab them back but I’m hard again- really hard- and instead I just put my hands on the tops of his thighs and squeeze them hard feeling them tense, feeling Mattie, hearing him moan softly as his hands nearly mirror mine.

“Al...” he pants out pulling back from me long enough just to say my name and swallow like he doesn’t know what to do. 

And when he licks his lips tasting mine lingering I have like the most fantastic idea I never had in my life. I want to taste him. Like I want my tongue to taste his lips like his is doing and before I think about it too much I just lean forward again- too fast, too hard, knocking him back against the door. He blinks at me owlishly, doubly so with those big lenses but that really just makes me want to do it more when he wears the surprised Mattie face. I can feel my glasses slipping down again. People say they’re like Buddy Holly glasses and I got ‘em for a song at a yard sale a few years ago. Mattie likes them. Mattie says they make me look super cool like one of the beats like “everything plus” he likes to say and that’s all that matters. Matthew definitely looks like everything plus right now and my hands are on his shoulders like I don’t know what to do with them. I hold him like I’m afraid he’ll run away and sometimes I am but he always looks at me all cool cat and laid back and he just puts his hands over mine letting me think.

“Can I?...” I move in again but stop and stare and finally I just blurt out for him to hold still. He freezes like a statue- like something in a wax museum. He doesn’t even blink and I don’t even think he’s breathing ‘cause I told him to stop everything. That really excites me when he does that. “I want to…” I don’t know why I never really thought about it. I guess I did but there never seemed to be time or place or always eyes watching and people listening. I wish I realized how much I loved my brother when I was young enough not to worry or care what people thought about that kinda thing but… but right now we have time and even if it’s only a year it’s way more time than I ever thought I’d have with Mattie all to myself. 

I lick him. That is… it sounds weird but that’s how I always thought it should be- tasting someone that is. I’ve heard about “frenching” before but I never dated girls really seriously- except for three dates with Natalie before she said I was treating her like a sister- and I don’t know French. I don’t want to know it. I just want to know how Mattie tastes so I lick his lips. I lick the side of his mouth a little nervously at first. I don’t want him to think what I’m doing is weird or unhip or whatever goofy word he’d throw at me. I don’t want to ever stop anything when it comes to him. I don’t stop now. I can feel him trying not to shake where my hands meet his shoulders and I hear him gasp and start breathing again just like I’m the one giving it back to him. I don’t know how I can feel his heart beating but sometimes like now I can even when I’m barely touching him it’s like some far out connection between the two of us. It makes me crazy but in a good way. It makes me want do to more and I just… I just lick everywhere on his face.

I don’t know if that’s why dogs do it but it feels really good. It’s amazing to taste all of Mattie’s skin and feel his face getting wet when I lap at his cheek. I like it when I feel him start to squirm like he’s being tickled. His knee comes up on the seat, foot wriggling out of his sneaker when he does. He hates getting shoe prints on the seat. I almost think he’s gonna kick me like he does when it gets “too intense” or “too real” or too any number of things. I put my left hand on his knee holding it there and I can feel him start to pant as he turns his face. There’s a salty sweaty taste of Mattie’s skin and a little bit of sunscreen that hasn’t soaked in yet from earlier this morning. I can see him kinda half look every which way and then his tongue too is tasting me back. It feels weird to be on the other end but weird good as warm wet bathes my face, licks along my jaw and it’s not tickling but totally far out and hot.

I almost don’t know what to do with my legs. They’re like dead weight in front of me and between them I feel so hard and heavy I don’t even know what to do. I can feel Mattie try to rub himself, shifting his foot almost jamming his heel into his crotch and I don’t think I could manage that much between the steering wheel and the gearshift. I can feel in my throat a soft frustrated rumble and I just turn my head for a minute and that’s when his tongue hits my lips, hits my own tongue hanging out so stupidly ‘cause it seems like I can’t catch my breath no matter how hard I try. I almost jump back when I feel it thick and moving against mine, lapping lick up and down and I can’t help but follow him tasting birch beer and the gum he must’ve spit out earlier. Definitely double mint this time. He likes Blackjack and I hate licorice but I love licking him and right now it’s like incense and peppermints just like the song. Or  incest and spearmint but I don’t care about all that right now.

“M-Mattie can I… I wanna…”

“Yeah… uh huh please please…” which comes out in a hurried rush against my mouth that sounds more like “peaspeas” but he slips towards me on the seat just as I slip a hand up his shirt. Mattie’s skin is always so hot. He runs hot like the engine of the car firing off a thousand explosions a minute just like combustion. I think I’m gonna combust now as I push the shirt up over his stomach knowing he normally worries about sun but it registers when I start feeling a breeze and rain droplets fall from the trees that we’re shaded like I could almost reach up and touch boughs bent heavy with water from the rain. Mattie doesn’t complain and I’m glad ‘cause trying to find a spot would be torture right now.

He lets me push the shirt up, pulling it over his head messing up his glasses, hair caught and  wanna feel us skin to skin all sticky and sweaty and I can feel my hands moving on their own running down the his sides, over smooth hot skin and his hand are already on the hem of my black T shirt tugging it from the back over my head. I cuss at him ‘cause he’s got me all tangled but I can hear him messing with the buttons on his pants and it just makes me hurry that much more to throw this stupid shirt in the backseat over the blue typewriter case next to the cooler. Mattie writes poetry. He writes a lot of poetry about war and God and sometimes about wicked dirty stuff where he uses the words like “cock” and “come” and my hands are almost shaking too badly on the brass button of my jeans to get them off. 

Mattie is barefoot. I don’t know why I didn’t notice that before but he does like socks in shoes and he’s still trying to rock into his heel leg curled under him, face all pink as he bites his lip and tries to help me. I can see when I stop looking down and let him undo the fly that the front of his white briefs are tented up, stained just a little darker and I really hope he didn’t shoot off already ‘cause I really need to do him so much. I kick the jeans off in a hurry and then like some synchronized twining of two northern water snakes, Mattie lays back, slides down on the big seat pulling me on top of him. He’s breathing heavy his hand grabbing the back of my neck as he wriggles his other leg on the seat throwing it half over into the back his bare foot in the air. I fumble under the seat, trying to find the latch to spring it back ‘cause I really don’t want to hit the steering wheel even out in the middle of nowhere like we are.

I find it, the seat hitting far back as it will go suddenly and then I’m falling on top of him kissing, feeling his arms circling under my arms tickling just a little bit, his fingers kneading my back. I’m between his legs, his right wrapped around my waist, heel digging hard to the small of my back but it just makes me wanna grind again him more, harder. I kiss him again but this time I feel like way more adult, like sophisticated, like I’m the best lover in the world when I decide to taste him inside. Mattie’s lips are parted panting, praying, every please plea making me wanna rut against him harder- and that’s when I put it in. I remember hearing talk about “slipping the tongue” about “frenching” and all those things that good girls didn’t do from the three giggling in the back of the party while I messed with the record player. 

I found Deep Purple that night and right now I find Mattie’s mouth just as deep and way wet and hot. I feel his fingers curl harder into my back when I do that. I feel nails clawing into my skin and I don’t know it’s ‘cause he’s tasting me back or cause I keep rubbing against him faster trying to yank his briefs off so I can feel every bit of his skin hard and on fire against mine. I wanna do it. I love doing it with Mattie, I love it when he wraps his legs around me and lets me rub on him ’til I go off and erupt like fireworks on the Fourth. I don’t even know what happens to his underwear when I shuffle it off to one leg. It might go in the backseat it might’ve been flung out onto the gravel when he kicked his legs. I don’t care. I bounce on my knees a few times pulling my own off and into the abyss like everything’s broken down around us and crumbled apart ‘til it’s just him and me and this car rocking and rolling and sweating while the Rolling Stones inspire me to roll my tongue against his.

Mattie sucks my tongue. My teeth bang against his as I kiss him more deeply, as I teach myself like everything that makes him moan and half sob pushing up against me. I can feel the sweat beading between our bodies making us stick ‘til we slip and I can feel how wet it gets between the both of us rubbing hard and furiously as we both get closer to coming. Mattie’s hands climb down. He grabs my butt and just holds me there like really torturously I’m trying to hard not to keep moving. He turns his hips and pushes and squirms and just uses me as much as he wants to get himself there right along with me so close. Sometimes he likes to shove me back and climb on top with his legs straddling mine bouncing up and down like some outta control savage and I could really go for that right now too.

I kiss him more. He doesn’t let me stay in control, pushing his tongue back into my mouth, tasting my teeth, tasting the top, anything he possibly can and I can feel both of us breathing hard against each other until it’s so heavy and desperate that there’s saliva pushed out, probably running down the side of Mattie’s face and I don’t know how something that seems so gross can feel so good but it does. It feels good when I can feel the growing sticky between our bodies, when I can feel wetness rubbed out of my slit and Mattie doesn’t grind so much as writhe back and forth and I don’t want to separate even a little bit from his body feeling that heat, feeling his nipples brushes against my chest and even the soft blonde hairs on his leg rubbing my hip but I wanna finish so badly I can’t stand it. One hand in Mattie’s long tangled hair pulls roughly. I don’t know why I do it I just know it makes him gasp and growl against my mouth, that one leg falling open like he wants me to… I don’t even know what. 

I have to shove my right hand between us and I can hear the soft whine, feel the vibration, the purr against my lips and God I never wanna stop kissing Mattie like this. I can feel my body stop, stay perfectly rigid when I fumble with my hand to close around both our dicks, sliding up and down Mattie and me both pushing our hips together even more crazy and needy when I do. It starts with heat. It always starts with heat, with Mattie’s hot body, with the heavy heat between my legs stretching everything to taut and tight I think I’m gonna burst. I thrust into my own hand more furiously, feel Mattie bite me when I pull his hair even more. I think his glasses are half cockeyed and I know mine sure as heck are ‘cause I feel them digging into the side of my face.

Mattie bites me and I love it when his teeth nip at my lips, when our heads twist in tandem and there’s more banging and friction and I swear I really swear as much as you’re not supposed to swear to God I don’t think my dick’s ever been this big or this hard in my entire life. I don’t know if it’s being outside with the wind whipping around us or the splashes of rain falling down, freedom or even Mick Jagger I my ear but I don’t think I’ve ever needed it this bad in my life. I love doing Mattie like this. I don’t care if we never get to New York or London or wherever we’re even going ‘cause I could die happy right here halfway to New Hope with new hope and like new love and want ten times higher than I ever thought I had.

I stop. I have to stop moving ‘cause my head is spinning and just kissing Mattie hard enough to bruise, to swell is all I can do or think about. My hand stops pumping I just squeeze like I’m holding on for dear life like Dirty Harry’s .44 is about to go off and I can’t remember how many bullets are left in the chamber. Something like that. Something like kissing Mattie deep, hard, him letting his head be wrenched to the side so I can drown in the taste of him licking all the messy spit from his mouth, moaning his name in a slurring rush of sound letting my hips move where my hand stopped and I think the tape in the player might be unravelling or I am. Something buzzes past me a fly a car or something and in my head where the music outside stops registering in my thoughts I just hear “come on baby light my fire.” I hear Mattie whining against me half sobbing, head pulling back forced me to let go as his hands slip from me one grabbing the back of the seat the other somewhere on the floor. I can see his head go back tossing from side to side, eyes screwed tight tears half leaking out of him and I can feel him shake stop shake stop and I know just like me he’s gonna go off so hard. 

My hand is on his chest as I put my mouth to his quivering neck, missing more, nipping, leaving little blood welling up rashes beneath the skin when he stops moving everything but a few hard thrusts into my hand getting it, my stomach, his chest sticky streamers of warm white wetness. I almost collapse on top of him. I can see his fingers running over his throat, over his neck where I’ve marked him and he looks at me with a blink blink of dazed honey dew devotion that I almost feel high. I feel light and loose like that stuff this guy Lars lit up in the boy’s bathroom last year right before he got expelled for something no one ever said. He got expelled and I can feel expelled, expelling ecstatically over my hand again but this time it’s not Mattie, it’s me as I shove against him hard, moving my hand getting his slim hip sticky palmed as I drag him to me grinding against him with every other slow spurt long and deep and I almost think that I could bottle this like like ether or RC Cola something and be like knock down dead, my knees nearly giving out as I steady myself with a hand to Mattie’s chest seeing sweat droplets intermingle with the trees’ own outpourings as I try to regain my vision again. 

Mattie sits up slowly, legs still spread around me, knees gently locked to my waist as he looks at me pushing out breathing, breathing in like he’s never done it before. Like we haven’t done it before dozen of times. I let my hand linger, gross, probably half staining the seat but I just want to kneel here and look at him naked and raw both of us like reborn into the world or some crazy beat stuff like Mattie would say. I don’t know if I want to talk. I don’t even know what to say except to say with my eyes, with my other hand to the side of his face how much I love him and how much I wish we could be joined like this into like that row row your boat snake with like no real end or beginning. Mattie told me about that once how it’s like the cycle of life and rebirth in the world. I open my mouth but nothing really escapes me and Mattie just gives me that half shy half mysterious smile through fogged and smeared lenses his hair the most dynamite bird’s nest ever. He shakes it out and laughs softly, putting his hands over his mouth looking down again like he’s embarrassed and happy at the same time. He looks up, looks down, looks at me again and giggles behind his hand making me wonder if I don’t have something on my face or my hair and his giddiness is almost infectious. 

I just keep smiling at him as I reach for the napkins from McDonald’s shoved into the glove box with a pristine owner’s manual and a handful of other maps. But then I stop. I look at him, moving my sticky hand and I look at it wondering just... I lick it. I lick my fingers first and I can feel my nose wrinkle and I can feel my face making the same face I’m sure I did when Uncle James let us have wine once at Thanksgiving. It’s salty. It’s weird. It’s thick and gooey and kind of... Mattie drops his hands and looks at me, laughter drawing to curiosity and I stop trying to figure out if I like it or hate it when I see him lower his head, long eyelashes sweeping briefly over his cheeks. He gives a lick a lot more adventurous than I did, looking up at me when he does. I don’t think. I dip my head feeling muscles pulling in my back as I tilt my head and meet him there. Our glasses bang together but our tongues are two fingers apart  the whole time licking my hand slowly, carefully and it isn’t the taste I think about but Mattie’s hot breath mixing with mine like a sweaty steam room curtained with hair. It’s slow and careful and I clean just like Mattie does until my hand drops and we lap lingering spent lust from each other’s faces. I open and close my right hand saliva sticky drying slowly in the thick air.

I still don’t know what to say to Mattie and he still hasn’t moved his legs. I don’t care. I could feel his legs wrapped around me like this forever as I watch him rest back on his hands looking at me with the best “love you Al” look he’s ever given me. Better than the 15th birthday portable Olivetti look or even the “finishing touches on Belle the Chevelle” look. I want to tell him that I love him. I want to tell him that was amazing and out of this world and that I hope we can do it like every night except maybe Sunday but I just lick my lips, lick his taste on me again and almost shut my eyes when I hear his voice. Mattie always talks quietly. He told me that he likes it when I stop and look at him and have to take every part of my attention to hear him talking. But I never want to miss what he says to me ever. Like never ever and I open my eyes watching his lips move just my name. That’s all he has to say is my name.

“Al...”

“What were you writing, Mattie?” Is what I finally think to ask him my voice almost as low as his as I pull the tape out of the player to stop the music. I think of the papers flying along the road, lost to the wind and the passing careless cars driving them into the earth. Mattie just smiles at me again and ducks his head once more

“They call us dirty unclean sinners they call us lost they call us two lambs strayed they call us betrayed they call us fallen to Hades like every other acid tripped doped up dragged down hey you wear your hair too long anti war clown, they call us to arms two bodies not seeing one soul one whole split up spit up from the same bones of Eden, who walk the same roads under the same stars and dream and scream and fuck hard in the same cramped caddy cars...” I can see in his eyes there’s more than that when he trails off and looks at me heavy from behind the glasses. And then he takes them off and I know he can’t see me too well but he can see well enough even with his eyes like hyper focused on my face that cussing, those dirty words that he throws down on paper so easily go red to my face but not to his.

“What’s... what the rest of it Mattie?” ... _Two hundred eighty nine days..._ Mattie takes my hand in his and looks past me blindly to the road giving a small squeeze.

“Everything.”  

“Forever, right, Mattie?” _I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in fate._

“Forever, Al.” ... _I don’t believe in anything but you._


	2. Undertow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Settled into an uncertain life in New York, Matthew dreams of everything that he shouldn't- including one Francis Bonnefoy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was and wasn't supposed to have a second part. You'll note the title called Seven Dreams East in the beginning there were supposed to be 7 chapters each a different character. Then I wrote America's chapter and decided it was a nice stand alone. But Canada's chapter kept calling me and wouldn't leave me alone so I picked it up a few times since last year but didn't decide to actually write it til tonight. So at this point I'm calling this a complete 2 parter. The reason being the concept for the next chapter (which would have been England) came to me so vividly and clearly I'd rather write this entire thing out as an original and "England's" part actually only works with an Irish author. So for practical purposes unless I can think of some work around (and I'd rather write the original than obsess over how to make "England's" narrative work with an Irish author in the au Hetalia sense) the probability heavily favors this ending the series from the fanfic end of things. The other reason I was hesitant to post it is because while America's part is more wistful than downright angsty Canada's here does get into some real angst but in the end I really wanted to do it. His part is also way way more cerebral and trippy and the voice is a bit hard so my apologies. All that being said thank you everyone who read the first chapter! C&C is of course always welcome and I appreciate everyone dealing with my flightiness.

My brother Al is dead. We buried him two months ago ten feet below the earth in a basement underneath some dive where the front door opens into a kitchen like some funky “Junky” excerpt. I don’t have a brother anymore. I have a boyfriend, a lover, a man who shares my face but no longer my blood. “Alfred Jones is _not_ my brother.” I read it again and then cross it out until the lines obscure every last bit of the pencil on the paper. I’ll write it again tomorrow and every other tomorrow so that I won’t forget it. I don’t forget anything I write down. I repeat, I recite, I rectify, testify every… yeah… I need to stop thinking like every thought is going on paper like I’m on stage or something or proselytizing poetry to the tea heads drinking it down like gospel. I tap the pencil and I tap my foot just imagining the beat, beating everything I write down, hoping one day I’ll meet Mr. Ginsberg like the hip Holy Father walking down the street waiting for me. 

One day that’ll be me. One day I’ll have spun all the world’s oppression to gold, and I’ll raise my brother to the Kingdom of God on Earth. But until then he’s dead. Alfred Adams is Alfred Jones, and Matthew Adams is Matthew Williams, and my brother is dead like An American Dream. I write it once more, a faint quaint little outline that’s thin enough to be erased from the world in small pink quantum bursts. One less doesn’t matter to me. I’ve already filled page after page a million times writing without looking down, so I’m always up, always like in tune to the beats of the universe. And God, Al tells me I sound like a total hippie dork, but he just doesn’t _see_ it like poetry, like every second of every day being reborn in the cosmos. …Maybe I should stop getting high but man it’s like absinthe, like the poet’s third eye, like opium light only cool and calm and everything coming together like Abbey Road.

“Alfred Jones is not my brother.” I say it again softly under my breath, and saying it means I can sit here and watch him all day long as long as I want and it’s okay. It’s okay here at least where guys have long hair and earrings, and women have short hair and other women kiss them against the brick buildings. It’s just like everything I ever read and dreamed about everything plus the stars aligning like fate. It’s totally bohemian, and free, and I say it again just mouthing the words really as I watch Al working on the car jacked up, the massive Lincoln hanging by like one thread to disaster on the stands. He’s sweaty. Even with the shade of the building and December being cold and brisk he’s got his coat off, gloves on, and I can see his face twisting the lug wrench on the last big bolt. I know I’m not writing. I’m not tapping. I’m just sitting here, the cold concrete step warmed under my coat. I’ve stopped. Everything’s stopped, even that pencil that was writing something totally wow up ’til I saw Al bent over again. It’s chilly. I go to button up, but instead he looks up at me as the last hard twist comes and I just totally freeze and take it off instead just so he’ll look at me longer.

He does. He always does. Here where it’s only him and me, and he’s not the star, he’s not the center stage, he always looks at me. He doesn’t forget me here like he did at school. I can feel my knees knock together as he looks up at me breathing heavy, and I see the metal slipping slowly out of his hand. I wish I could draw. I wish I could put that on paper like I’m seeing it right now instead of just words, ‘cause there’s no way no how that I could every capture all that. Everything plus Apollo descending from Olympus, I can feel my knees keep rubbing together like a cricket in Times Square, or three queer steps over to the left. I have goosebumps big time like my skin wants to get up and dance, like every pore wants to crawl over to him supplicant on the ground and… and I think I might have asthma the way my breath can’t seem to come the right way. Maybe I shouldn’t smoke so much after all. The pen’s still in my hand, but I drop it hypnotized like his eyes can make me do anything on Earth. _Tell me to fly Al, I’ll jump- like take everything off and take off into the sky and be like Icarus high and cool and pleasepleaseplease tell me you’re gonna be done with that soon._

He holds up a finger, hip trickster man keeping me waiting here cold, hot, hard. I look down quickly feeling the glasses slip on my nose. Money- that’s all it is. It’s money that guy Arthur is paying to change the tire, money to change the oil, money to change whatever Arthur wants for Andrew Jackson looking like some smug sucker dangling from Arthur’s fingers. I sigh and write that down, squirming on the concrete, counting crazy seconds ’til Al’s done. And that’s when he takes my hand and takes me back home, and does it to me real good like he does two three times a day til I think I’m gonna be rubbed raw and bleeding. 

My face feels warm as I get down like 3 words for every dirty ditty going through my head like quantum quartz quickening perversion, ‘til it blows sky high and I think I might erupt like Pompeii. 

“Quantum Quartz…” I like that. I write it down whisper quick quiet. It sounds way trippy, like every other atomic metaphor going off the lines in the cold composition book. Words standing for everything that goes through my head, everything I’ve done, every sin committed in the dark. “…those Quantum Quartz stars drowning out cars filling my closed blissful eyes bright-eyed boy bringing me to…” _Al. I really wish I could draw. I wish I could take this pencil and bring you to life in more than stupid words. I want to look down and see you on the page naked, wanting, my other half._ I just let the eraser slip between my dry lips, tasting nasty, but filling my mouth with something other than soft heavy breathing down to the paper. 

 _I wanna suck you, Al. That’s what you called it, right? That thing you did. That thing you let me do. I really liked that._ I write that down like the last great gospel, like a benediction, like the holy trinity father, son,holy spirit coming into me when he-

“Ah, is the great _Baudelaire_ at work on his latest masterpiece?” I nearly jump, nearly drop the book, nearly forget to breathe when _he_ sits down beside me. Francis Bonnefoy; French, flirt, and forbidden, like falling from Eden. I’m terrified to even look at him and instead I look to Al, look to the door to see if Arthur descends like Chernobog from Bald Mountain to stalk us like a black shadow. I don’t see anything yet but the door so my eyes dart back to the page. _Alfred is not my brother._ I stare down hard at the black graphite, scratching out that ever important declaration one last time for good measure. I whisper it softly to myself. _Alfred is not my brother._ But he’s my lover. Mine. Me, Matthew, and ever scar, every nightmare, every tempest tossed dirty jack off in the dark is him and me and _no one_ _else_. _No one ever Al God strike me if I ever.._. 

“I…” The word already slips, I’ve already looked at him. I’ve already felt him there next to me. Al says he wants me. Al says he doesn’t like the way he looks at me. Al says so many things before turning around and smiling for Arthur and bending over to work on that car hoping for an extra tip. I can’t stand the thought that Al might forget me again even for an atomic second. I look back again, Al gone, dead and damned to the world or fallen through the looking glass and that heat hits my thigh, thigh to thigh like Francis could lay his hand on my thigh like Simon, and for just a moment it’s Francis making my teeth bite hard marks into the pencil nearly snapping it. I pull it out of my mouth slowly, turning, watching Francis looking out at the trees with what they Al calls his “bedroom eyes”. I wonder if he’d ever want to take me to his bedroom. _Stop looking at him Mattie. You’re mine, Mattie._ Mine. His. That’s right. In this world I’m his he’s mine Do Wah Diddy and everything else.

Like Bella Lugosi one look, one vampire bite is all it takes to make a slave, and I think there was one time, that first time he saw me, the first time those eyes swept up, down, like the north wind blowing carelessly forgetting even my name no matter how many times I tell him. He still doesn’t look at me but the book instead, at the words flipped into view as a gust flips the pages to _that_ page of all things _._ I can see him reading. I see those eyes sweep with more interest than he’s ever looked at me, and I see that mouth curl wickedly, those long fingers traipse up the side of his face, resting his head while I push up my glasses furiously and miss catching the book as he lifts it up with gusto, with a flourish, turning his body away. 

“Is that my name there, _monsieur Rimbaud?_ ” he teases me. He always teases me. I grab for the book, knowing that I lean into him just like Al says that I do, the coat falling from my shoulders, bare skin sliding over the finely woven shirt. I pull back before my fingers touch his arm and hold my hands on my lap pitifully.

“Don’t… don’t read that…” Holding the book in one hand like a poet, Victorian open shirt, tuberculosis and Keats kicking cock over his tongue, and down those stone steps. 

“If I press my lip ‘round your Eiffel Tower tip, tipping your head back like angels singing hymns would I care that you’re not him? If your… Ah, I do not know if I should speak the next word aloud,” he declares dramatically closing the book in one large hand. 

He allows it to fall neatly from his fingers to my hands, and I linger. I don’t move back right away, seeing if he’ll back down first with my arm almost around his, my face right there too close to ignore no matter how hard he tries. He looks at me with a sideways playful smile- blank, cold, perfectly photogenic.  

“You are far too young for those words, _bébé._ ” I give that smile right back reflecting Medusa’s mirror. _Stone. That’s what I am, Mr. France. I’m not rubber like a kid. I’m stone like marble like ancient halls and like way more sophisticated and hip than the runaway sad stories that Arthur says you “seduce”. Seduce me, Francis, I dare you, I double dog dare you and we’ll see who gives that mysterious Mona Lisa smile. Or maybe I’ll seduce you first, huh?_

“If I’m the foolish virgin,” I say feeling almost giddy at how quickly I think of it. “Then does that make you the demon bridegroom?” I slowly sit back but I touch the side of my face just a little two fingers is all. That’s Rimbaud. Like Baudelaire. Like French, like the poetry God’s seed spilled that started everything rising from sea foam like Aphrodite. _Oh baby, you’re a total love God._ I hear Al saying that to me. I hear him whispering in my ear, hot breath tickling late last night in the smoky room, high and mighty hanging off the mattress, dragging me back down to earth when he fell. I’m still looking at Francis even as I dream of Al and that’s totally bad, but maybe that’s just who I am after all. Wicked, sinful, lustful sodomite I am, totally ready steady go wherever. If that’s what it means to be more than Al’s shadow. He chuckles softly warm air cutting through that hazy shade of winter as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cigarette. I watch like hypnotic, as he brings it to his lips, the flame flying high nearly kissing his face, wild enough to make me draw back from the fire.

“Oh no no no, I am an angel, _mon petit_ , a how you say… a fucking saint, _oui_?” I look back at his mouth when he swears- stopping mid motion no longer turning to Al. I look down at the gold cross hung guilty, and cross my arms over my chest remembering that once upon a time my body was bared only for Al and God. _Put your coat back on, Matthew._ With a poisoned apple heartbeat I suck in a breath instead slow, steady my eyes still drawn to that mouth, my fingers twined childishly around the chain. _I won’t. Not ’til you look at me coat, gloves, everything’s off until you see me the way the rest of the world should see me._ “Isn’t that right, _mon cher?_ ” My fingers stop, twisting tight one loop around my index finger as I watch the lighter fly through the air caught by magic. No, not magic but a faerie of a different sort. 

My eyes dart immediately to Arthur coming outside, those hands in tandem lowering to take light the cigarette in his dry lips, and he let ashes drop down to the next step. Francis wears an angel’s beatific smile as Arthur stops, hand on the railing, to look at Al. He’s the Masque of the Red Death in that short red jacket. There’s no escape from death, from sin, from decay, from the temptation of the flesh, even as it melts off and rots in the earth. The sun peeks out from behind the clouds, hovering over tall building tops in the distance. I swear there’s a choir singing pretty praises as that halo suddenly rings around Francis’ head when he tilts his face to stare death full frontal, hands behind him, leaned back lazily, almost falling off the stairs as he arches his back, shows his throat to the wolf. And that’s when he smiles, his own pearly canines gleaming, the filtered end of the cigarette trapped somehow daintily between his teeth.

Arthur hardly spares him a glance as he stops before the laid back roadblock, ashes to ashes flitting down- their metal butterfly wings intermingle in a pagan mating dance mid-air and blanketing the steps with those frail flurries. Arthur is the dark horse, wild, untamed, unbridled, raw sex stuff stuck between two stodgy black loafers. If Francis is incorrigible I’m invisible. He looks at Al. He’s only ever looked at Al since that first day we met them thinking we were some street junky fairy boys. Arthur’s hands are cold. I remember that. His hands turn tears to ice. I remember that too. He doesn’t smile. I’ve never seen him smile. I wonder if he even knows _how_ to smile, how to laugh, how to do anything but stare down from beneath those dark caterpillar eyebrows like every devouring demon of Gehenna. 

I look from Arthur’s shoes to his distant face. Arthur keeps looking at Al like he’s not laying with Adonis every night. But if Adonis looked at me like that… if Francis, tousled hair, open shirt, hairy manly chest ever looked at me like that… _The way Al looks at you, you mean… Shuttup, Matthew, Al’s dead, remember? In this Wonderland dragged to Hell your brother is buried right alongside the white knight. Good, better, bested. Or maybe he’ll rise like the phoenix reborn and let that catching fire light blind everyone to everything that’s not him. Maybe he’ll start looking at Arthur the way he looks at you._ I didn’t know my eyes could feel like they were on fire like this. I didn’t know I knew how to hate someone until I met Arthur. I pull the notebook closer like armor over the pale blue shirt I’m wearing as if somehow marbled print can stop x-ray vision. Arthur still watches Al. Francis still watches Arthur.

“What’s that now?” He smokes again- strong unfiltered tobacco like Ray Chandler blessed every cigarette himself. He and Francis don’t share cigarettes.

“Do I not make you sing the Ave Maria? Do I not take you to the blessed communion every night?” His head tilts like the sun’s kissing every bit of his mouth and I bite back envy. _Make me sing. Make me beg, take me to church, Francis I’ll worship you properly, any alter you lay in front of me on my knees I..._ I don’t do anything but hold the book until my fingers shake, nearly holding my breath, the shallow ebb and flow of air starting to make me dizzy. Arthur breaks the fairy prince’s spell with a dismissive snort. He doesn’t look at me, but I know he sees me.

“If you’re gonna fuck the little catamite when his brother isn’t looking, Francis,” he sneers kicking ahead daring Francis not to move, “at least have the decency not to do it in front of me.” Francis sits up with an errant fix of his hair, head bowed thoughtfully, the thinking man inscrutable and gorgeous. 

“He’s not my brother.” I say that like I would say he’s not my lover. I don’t want to look at Al or Arthur. I don’t want to feel that violent jealousy, that sixth sin destroying Cain. I close my eyes and pretend that I shove the Red Queen down the stairs. Off with his head, and damn his damn dirty money. But I don’t stand. I let go of the composition book letting wind blown pages flutter down three steps to join the pencil while the Cheshire cat sits next to me all eyes and lies. I don’t care if it blows away. My eyes don’t see anything but Arthur with a handkerchief wiping the dirt from Al’s face. I don’t move. _If he’s going to fuck the little catamite…_ Arthur’s accented intrusion echoes empty footfalls in marble halls. He speaks to Al as I watch, speaking low, seducing, touching everything that used to only belong to me. _If he’s going to fuck the little catamite_ … It’s not Arthur’s voice this time but my own in my head Cape Fear Cady dark. I realize right now what it’s like to want to murder someone. I wonder if Arthur has the devil’s black blood.

“Do I look like a demon to you, _mon petit_?” I almost jump, my shoulders hip hop when he speaks to me again, and I’m almost afraid to look away from Al, as if my eyes are the last looking glass holding him fast. No, I’m the one who’s the demon, I think. I swallow hard when he turns back to me as an afterthought to some dance, seductive even in bitter hateful apathy. I still can’t help but watch him, my head turning left and right a slow jive metronome, back and forth between the two of them. They say Lucifer was beautiful- the most beautiful of the angels in heaven, but I don’t think the devil himself has those lips back to hugging that cigarette tightly, has those eyes that even dead raise Hell to Heaven on Earth. I lick my own lips tasting his in my imagination and I can feel my heart beat that traitorous subway racing hum.

“You look like...” _Like sex and death. You look like the word “fuck” personified- like fuck and sin and cock and every dirty word I want to say when..._ My voice is small and unsteady, and I stop steep eyes on Al turning to me, my twin committing that same unconscious sin. 

Somewhere between Arthur and Armageddon I forget how to be quick with my words and my head tilts in a mirror mirror of  Al the two of us incestuously in sync in our betrayal, and I don’t understand what’s in his eyes when he sees me sitting here. Arthur presses that handkerchief into his hands, and I see him bite his thumb, bite, lick, and bring it to the side of Al’s mouth. He blinks at me dot dot dash like I’m the only one who can save his soul. _What are you doing, Mattie?_ I’m drowning, Al, that’s what I’m doing. I can’t swim, remember? Remember you had to save me in the pool when I was drowning in the deep end and… and it’s dark. It’s dark like it was then, when I was invisible and even Al forgot that I was ever born, and I realize as vertigo grips me that it’s only dark because my eyes close, and I think again how easily Al forgets me, forgets his ghost when he’s walking among the living. I close them to Al’s darkened eyes and his mouth pressing to Arthur’s skin with only a big brother’s spite. _I’m not a ghost, Al, I’m not a shadow, I’m not your reflection, remember?_

I turn my eyes to the two unbuttoned buttons, and a dust of hair spun like fairy tale gold by an imprisoned princess in the clock tower. My clock tower chimes six times for dusk, and I put a hand on Francis’ knee clearing all the pawns from the chess board. Francis isn’t anything but a flippant house of cards, but I don’t take it away. I keep it there, I keep the gauntlet down cold clammy thing that it is. 

“You look like...” I whisper, trailing off, letting my mouth move silent breaths that makes him watch my lips thoughtfully. He traces a finger over the back of my hand, and for a moment he looks like he wants to use it for an ashtray, before dropping hot ash off to the side with a slow breath.

“If you cannot finish the sentence, _bébé_ you should move your hand.”

“You look like a man I want to fuck,” I answer boldly in a voice not my own as I dream too briefly of Al, naked and sweaty dragging his hard erupting body over mine. I squeeze his thigh making sure I look him in the eyes, catching his eyes like a falling star, like a mandrake root, like Donne come undone. 

He smiles gently and it’s the nastiest meanest look I’ve ever seen on his face. He takes a long drag of the cigarette as if he might really consider, it and he fools me leaning in, turning his head like he might really kiss me. I keep my eyes wide open as Leviathan floods the world and drowns everything around us in the depths of the resurrection. I suck in a breath like an asthmatic, like a fish gulping useless air, and I almost whisper his name like the Nicene Creed bringing me closer to God. But it isn’t my mouth that meets his lips but his lips to the shell of my ear instead like Father Donovan telling me to say the rosary three times for lustful thoughts. _How damned am I for being a dirty sodomite, father?_ But it isn’t absolution that he purrs softly when he whispers low, making my eyes close even as he scorns me.

“How can you fuck me, little boy when you smell like your mother’s tit milk?” He pulls back plainly, face bland as he takes another long drag of the cigarette, no sneer, no jeer, just nearly pure distant disaffection like he’s reading the yellow pages, like 637 time beep beeping my life away. It beeps til it flat lines, the flat lines of his face making me want to reach out and-

And I reach out before I know what I’m doing, feet hot, feeling angry, wicked, spiteful, everything Al yells at me when I reach that breaking point and break... everything I can find. But it smolders cold just as quickly. I take the cigarette, fingers pickpocket quick, that slight moment of invisibility letting me steal it from him and bring it to my own lips. I kiss him in the third person and look at him over the lenses, blurry shock playing across my imagination, and I don’t care if it’s real or not. It’s all I need to take a deep breath, the taste harsh, and not half as sweet as that mild mellow I love. But I persevere, sucking down as much as I can slowly, letting my tongue tap tap the filter like I could mix his taste and mine together. I hold it between my thumb and index finger just like it’s my favorite rolling paper, and left my eyes close a little like mysterious as I can be, while I try to hold on and not choke. Babies choke on bottles not tapped right and that’s not me. That’s not Matthew Williams anymore. 

I hold it in, hearing silence, hearing some faint buzz of Arthur’s accented come ons and I hold it until I see spots dazzling my darkened vision before breathing out slow, steady, breathing hot smoke to his face with a big grin. I wonder if you can get a contact off one of these too and I giggle. I giggle euphoric and it’s probably all in my mind ‘cause magic isn’t legal like this. Magic is a few dollars dropped into the hand of the magic man behind the curtain. But I feel it anyway as I hand it back, watching his eyes go back to the wet tip in his hand, that mouth pulled to a frown saying “fuck” clear as day.

“What do I smell like now?” I ask as the wind stops its assault on the city long enough for me to drape that tobacco essence around the both of us. I don’t look away from him. I don’t look to Al. I don’t imagine Al. I don’t imagine anything but Francis standing like the pied piper beckoning me into the dark hall behind the door with nothing but a wink and a toss of his head.

He laughs. He laughs softly, amused, bitter chocolate as he regards the cigarette and looks to Arthur not even so much as looking at me. I follow that expression and freeze cold like the White Witch turning me to stone. _Judas_.That’s the hateful hiss in my mind as I see the two of them, thirty pieces of silver turned to forty friggin dollars that Arthur holds in his hand, as he looks more to Francis than Al. _You first. It wasn’t me it was you! You!_ I hear Francis laugh softly again. _If he’s going to fuck the little catamite..._

“You smell like Arthur’s jealousy out of control,” Francis says when I stop caring that he exists. He comes back to existence, he comes back to life from that portrait long shattered long enough to break the looking glass and send me tumbling down to hell. “You smell like a child, playing a dangerous game with a man.” He stands and I find myself nearly blindly reaching for his pant leg. I can feel the world start to spin as Francis calls down, artfully disheveled derelict, “Ah here is my proper Arthur, the quintessential gentleman supervising the work so eagerly.” There’s barely a turn of Arthur’s wicker stick head, only a careless caterpillar brow arched in his direction, his spit covered spider fingers crawling back up the drowned downspout. the purity poisoning arachnid

“Al!” _Stop looking at him! Look at me! Matthew! Me your shadow, your ghost, your everything!_ I don’t yell much- like never really- but I do now. I’m loud, proud, like those guys who marched from that bookstore here, free to be me and all that babble that bubbles up as I shove Francis, watching Al turn and look up at the sound. Arthur shoots me the dirtiest look ever, whether or not because of Francis, or Al, or how dare the mouse squeak too loudly, I don’t know. But I almost trip over my own feet, one sneaker stupidly untied as I scramble for the book. The pencil is forgotten as I stumble down the last few steps, taking my coat, not even bothering to put it on. I see him open his mouth with a “Mattie” protest forming like miserable word clay, but I don’t care. I don’t care about his “Mattie please”, and his swearing to God, to ten Hail Mary’s that I didn’t see a damn dirty thing that I saw pass between them. From me to Arthur back and forth supplications like some immoral metronome eyes Kit-Cat this and that clock tic toc. 

I stop. Some five feet easy couch to chair lava jump in the living room where the floor is some concrete ice hell. The wind blows and I don’t even hear what he says to me, fallen angels flapping wings ringing past my ears and all I hear as I turn away is him to Arther, Daniel Webster to Mr. Scratch. He’ll be out at sun up to change the oil, he says. But the tires are done, he says. And that’s okay “Arty, right?”, he says not even looking at me anymore. I can see that “Arty right?” go right to somewhere where Arthur looks back at him way more intently than he should right in front of me. And I see that dazzling diamond smile, bright eyes back, charming, glimmering, my Al, my God glitter ball shining everywhere but me. _If he’s going to fuck the little catamite._ I smile too, tight, bright white. I turn, like the seasons, like winter frost freezing the world and walk without a word, without a wave, without a single saving sound passing my lips.

“Mattie... wait a sec Mattie... yeah Artie I...” I don’t hear anything. I walk faster, hair whipping, streaming, flaxen, waxen, that righteous sting to my face feeling like baptism. “Mattie!” Louder, more frantic this time and it only makes me pick up my feet and march fast, hard, the drum of my feet on the pavement some mystic war beat throwing the gauntlet down. “Mattie!!!” Screamed like I’m dying, and my foot staggers, the left, the sinful one almost tripping over the pavement but I don’t stop. I take that trip and let my head turn half a turn behind and see him start to come, start to follow and that’s when I run. I take off- slow, Mattie’s so slow isn’t he always- except this time I’m like time itself flying through some physical plane, taking off ethereal and uncatchable and I start to hear the hoofbeats behind, the wild savage whoop my name screamed again and I can’t help but half laugh, half sob as I run fast enough that I can feel the stretch of those muscles like my body will rip apart at the seams if I force myself faster but I do. _If I run... will you follow? Will you catch me? Will you follow me and fall off the face of the Earth, Al? Catch me, Al. Catch me if you can. If you dare- if I’m really yours._

“Mattie!” Closer, angry, I hear him and see the lamppost with the old green Ambassador parked a foot from the curb and that’s where the staircase down to the second level of Hell falls, to lust, to eternal whipping winds banging that old door and I gladly descent to that dank dark paradise lost with one jump down four steps, hitting hard as I hear my name again some window somewhere opening up above as my hand fumbles in my pocket shaky with the key. I don’t look up. I don’t look at him as I turn the lock, his voice almost in my ear- as the man above us yells to stop behaving like two animals- when I open the door. I pirouette, some show and tell ballerina music box, just as Al slams into it hard, crashing through, slamming me back into the wall, careless mule kicking the door shut behind him. Red faced, raw, hot, sweaty he looks at me wild eyes, the ocean and the storm swirling to one, and one word is all he gets out before I shove him back to the other wall of the small short hall.

“Mattie-” is all I want to hear after my coat drops between us, cushioning the fall of my notebook, the only cushion for Al’s head the bang bang hard wood closet door. His hands come up, but mine are already on his shoulders, my head turned, catching that open mouth hard, his teeth hitting my top lip. _I’m not a man, Francis? I’m a_ bébé _, you say? Does a boy do this, Francis? Does a boy do it like this? Does Arthur do it to you like this, Francis?_ A _bisou_... that’s what Francis calls it and I’ve never done it like this til now, but I want to taste him. I want to taste what Al tastes when he licks me all over, wet, wanting, and I lick at him open mouth, catching his tongue, swirling, twirling two dragonflies mid air dancing higher ’til like Icarus it’s total meltdown. I can feel it melting down, spit, some half cough as Al gasps against me both of us out of breath and just so far out of our depths it feels like drowning. 

 _You’re mine, Al._ I think I might have said that out loud some mumbled mush smashed down to a slick messy offering between us as his hands drop down to my back, big, strong, fanning out, drawing me closer. It’s me doing it to him this time. It’s me who ruts, me who groans hard and shoves desperately against him grinding together, feeling hard, heavy, hearing the door knock some big bad wolf banging down blow after blow as I try to do it to him through our clothes, kissing him deeper like I could come into him through our mouths alone, tasting him til he tastes like tasting myself. 

“Al...” It’s so much easier to say his name in some pagan passion prayer, all tongue, all throat sounds as his hands drop down lower clutching pants, kneading my ass, pulling my so much crazy closer I think we might swap bodies when I finally lose it.

I want to drive against him so hard that I go into him, if that would even work the way I’ve heard whispered it does or the way that one night I thought I saw-

“Mattie...” half slurred, half word, half guttural moan as Al turns his head, biting my shoulder eyes shut tight the way he sometimes does.

“I wanna suck you, Al,” I say, eyes wide open to the wood grain like maple cherry clarity. I wanna get there so badly. I’m so hard, I’m so close to just shooting my underwear into blissful stickiness, but I can see so clearly as I stare at the swirling knothole, Al’s dick heavy, thick in my hand and I want to taste. I want to be a man and I want to get on my knees in front of him for my covetousness and beg for a Benedict’s benediction the only way I know how.

“Oh God, Mattie...” he shivers, that shudder passing through his body to mine and he almost doesn’t let me go, those hands squeezing tighter, more possessive, more wanting just urging me to melt back into him as one body.

“Let me suck you, Al,” I say again to his ear whisper quiet that way I do so quiet that even God can’t hear what passes between the two of us. I lick. I let myself taste the shell of his ear and I feel him nearly lift me off the ground when I do, a shake of his thighs and I like him again, lick lick “pleaseplease” until I think I made him lose it. Only he lets go, looking me full in the face, biting his lips like I know he’s never done for that damn Arthur, and I tuck my hair behind my ear, my Mattie to his Al and I smile at him, only for him this time before I drop to my knees, throwing the notebook into the living room. My jacket bunches, my pants are tight, and I nearly unzip them but I can’t wait. 

I can’t hold back the hands of time ticking hateful seconds by and my hands are already to the button of his jeans, to the zipper, to a series of painful clicks down, his hands in tandem with mine to push jeans, underwear -held by one fine sticky strand growing thinner until it breaks, stuck to his thigh. I almost hold my breath, my face close, closer than it’s ever been and my mouth feels so wet with saliva I forgot to swallow, nerves bunching until I look up and see his beautiful blue eyes looking own at me and me alone. _Oh my God, if I die now, if you pull me from this wicked world now let this be the one and only thing I ever remember._ My eyes turn back down from Heaven to this cursed land of Nod the only blessed pillar pointing heavenward all for me. _I love you, Al. I love you so much I..._ I take hold of his dick, stroking him, feeling his hips rock forward, hearing another bang of his head to that door, his hands falling, palms flat another loud smack as I squeeze, up and down, fisting him hard, feeling the slick wetness pooling from his tip.

“Ma... Ma... t...tt...ieeeee” My name. That’s my name, Al. I’m not your brother. You’re not my brother. You’re my lover, my only forever, Al, my everything. I move my head, thinking to taste with just my tongue, but I push my hand down to the base, letting every inch bob wanting in front of my mouth and I don’t hesitate to show Al how much I need him. The head of his dick passes my lips, parting them, my head moving down fast, taking as much as I can til I feel him hit the back of my throat and I swallow hard, gripping tighter, pulling back with a sharp breath through my nose. He’s salty stiff like ultra sweaty skin but so good, so wet, my spit slicking the rest of his shaft making him glide past my lips like a melting twin pop. I suck slurp every bit of that drizzling sticky faster, more frantically, until my head pulls back quick pop like bubblegum, and I become back aware of just how loudly he’s chanting my name with every bang of his fist to that door. _I told you I’m not a child, Francis._ I look up with a smile, coquettish- somewhere I learned that and I’m not even sure how but his answering ocular plea tell me just how badly he wants me to keep going before I even hear the “pleaseMattieplease.”

I move my head so eager to do it again, to make him crazy, to hear him beg me, to have to hold his hips back, but then I stop with a lick, a lick to the tip, a lick around, my mouth sucking in series around the shaft, my tongue bathing him everywhere I can find, and it takes both of my hands to his hips to keep that bucking still.

“Mattie,” desperate whine this time and I bet Francis would whine just like that. _“Matthieu...”_ That’s what he’d say. That sick smug smirk wouldn’t be so arrogant then and for one brief moment that thought bleeds to to thought of his dick, fat, thick, long, and I nearly fall back hearing Al call my name again. My eyes are wide, my nails digging to his hip and I look up again remembering my Al, remembering that look, knowing if I look back up I’ll retake every bit of Heaven back into my soul with just... one... “Mattie... please...” 

That’s it. That’s the sound. That’s the look. Those eyes heavy, his lips swollen from _my_ mouth, and I have no idea why I ever thought of anything different as I shut my eyes and think only of Al. I let that voice be the curse breaker, be the anchor back and I hear him like a thousand Hallelujahs in the church of my mind. I take him in again, fast, hard, hearing that drawn out half scream as again he hits my throat and I almost gag, throat closing tight. I turn my head but down let up again down, again gag, again Al tries even harder to break my hold on his hips and thrust into my mouth and as his hands tangle in my hair and his knees start to buckle I want to let him. My knees slip apart, that jacket sliding on the hard wood floor, as I let him go, fumbling with the zipper of my own pants, the tight draw of the fabric making it so hard that I nearly stop, but I tug, I twist, I swear and I look up again just as I get it undone, get my trembling hands to pull my dick out from folds of fabric, a breath as I look up and nod quickly. _Do it. God, Al, do it, I want to taste you again, I want to taste you when I shoot all over._

I hold my breath this time, mouth open, his hands bring my head back, his hips barely restrained as he starts thrusting into my mouth slowly then faster, faster, my breath holding my glasses sliding off and pushing back again foggy, stained- probably, I don’t even know after I close my eyes. The only feeling is the hard scrape of his dick hitting the back of my throat and my hand furiously stroking my own shaft, the other holding my balls feeling them taut so full, so ready, I don’t think I’ll last as long as he does with those “Mattie Mattie...” moans meeting my ears with that “Mattie Mattie” turning to “I’m gonna I... I...” until “I” becomes a hair twisting yank of my head off just as his hips surge, wet splashes hitting my face, my nose, my open mouth hot and salty and I’ve never tasted him like this, so good and warm and- 

And he drops to his knees like a stone, but not boneless, no. He pushes me back, mouth over my face, his tongue lapping long wet licks, cleaning, tasting, moaning my name again as he licks every bit from me. I don’t even know how he crawls up me, how his hand goes over mine hard, just hard enough with him kissing me open mouth again, but he does and I’m so close I can’t stop when he jerks me to finish. His mouth steals every cry like an enchanted vault of screams until I don’t think my throat can take any more abuse. I think he tastes me. I think I black out. I think there’s a point where his mouth moves down and he greedily laps every bit of me that he can, but all I remember is the dusty light fixture above my head, and his hand around my wrist pinning it to the ground. 

I remember maybe that I may have said Francis’ name  but I know I couldn’t have possibly because Al hasn’t stopped loving me. He hasn’t stopped kissing me. He hasn’t stopped promising me forever. He hasn’t let go of my wrists, and he hasn’t stopped telling me that I’m his. He hasn’t stopped saying my name. There’s something important there I’m sure that I forgot but I don’t remember any of it. I somehow just know, just only know like some butterfly wing flapping epiphany that all I have is now and now is Al and if now is all there is then now is like totally forever in this moment. Forever that I dream. Forever that I love, and if tomorrow’s sun sets and doesn’t rise then I just-

“Al...” I don’t know why my voice is sleepy as it is but I can’t help the yawn, the slow turn of my head like a bowling ball rolling slowly, inexorably down the gutter. He stops and he looks at me some nervous tremble and I almost think my wrists are pulsing so hard that I can feel them beating with my slow sleepy heartbeat.

“Yeah, Mattie?” Eyes like crystal blue persuasion look down at me and it just makes me smile super wide.

“You know I’ll love you forever, Al.” _I’m glad that I can’t draw._

“Forever, Mattie?” _Words are so much better than images._

“Forever, Al.” _I don’t know why I ever believed anything else._


End file.
